It Wasn’t Easy, But the Heat Advance

It’s not supposed to be easy to make it to the NBA Finals, even for teams as dazzlingly talented and experienced as the Miami Heat. And while the outcome of Monday’s Game 7 in Miami was never in serious doubt—the Heat’s eventual 22-point margin of victory against the Indiana Pacers, if anything, understates the game’s lopsidedness, and nearly explains the bored expression on Justin Bieber’s face throughout the game, if not quite his leather baseball jersey or lip gloss.

But Miami’s series against the Pacers was not nearly that one-sided. The young Pacers gave the Heat everything the Heat could handle over seven games, and quite frequently a little more than that. But what was a disappointing end for the Pacers is transparently not the end for what looks likely to become one of the Eastern Conference’s great rivalries. And it’s just the beginning for NBA fans, who now get a NBA Finals match-up between one of the last decade’s greatest teams—the rejuvenated San Antonio Spurs—and the team that was built to be this decade’s dynasty.

Of course, Miami also won the game and the series by getting great at the best possible moment, and because they’re the team that has LeBron. But there’s nothing especially inevitable-seeming about them at the moment, especially given the well-rested and well-credentialed Spurs team waiting for them in the Finals. “Miami and San Antonio represent two diametrically different models, but standards of greatness within the NBA,” Yahoo’s Adrian Wojnarowski writes. “The league does belong to LeBron James, yes, but it also belongs to the San Antonio Spurs and Miami Heat. Greatness endures, and now it finally meets in these NBA Finals.”

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In recent days, Jason Kidd and Grant Hill have both retired, each after long careers that will likely land them in the Basketball Hall of Fame. Ramon Ortiz, a well-traveled righthanded pitcher, has also had a long career—he won the 87th game of his career earlier this season, at the age of 40.

His career hasn’t been nearly as distinguished as those of Kidd and Hill—there are 86 losses to go with those wins, and a career ERA of 4.95 –but the most stark contrast between Ortiz and his more successful cross-sport peers was in how Ortiz may have left the game. Kidd and Hill announced their decisions; Ortiz threw a pitch for the last-place Blue Jays against the last-place Padres in the third inning on Sunday, clearly felt something spring loose in his elbow, and then spiked his glove and collapsed in tears behind the mound, seemingly aware that his career was likely over.

Ortiz has not formally retired; the Jays placed him on the 15-day DL, and no official diagnosis beyond an elbow strain has emerged regarding what happened to his arm on that pitch. But in its raw and transparent roughness, Ortiz’s sudden confrontation with what might be the end of his career as a big league pitcher had unexpected and enduring dramatic power.

“Having studied his resilience, I choose to believe that Ramon Ortiz will keep on keeping on, that at some point he’ll be back and pitching again, even if it’s only in the Dominican Winter League or some ramshackle independent outpost,” Sports Illustrated’s Jay Jaffe writes. “Whatever his shortcomings may be as a performer, he will be out there until he’s satisfied that he has wrung every last pitch out of that right arm.”

This may well be so, and good luck to Ortiz in that pursuit, if he decides to take it on. Earlier in his post, Jaffe quotes a famous line from ex-big leaguer Jim Bouton’s book Ball Four: “You spend a good piece of your life gripping a baseball and in the end it turns out that it was the other way around all the time.” This is doubtless as true for Kidd and Hill with a basketball as it has been for Ortiz with a baseball. It’s just that the great ones are lucky enough to have a bit more say when it comes to letting go.

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